Joe Mccarthyism Analysis
The Smearing of Joe McCarthy
Andrea Friedman’s “The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: the lavender Scare, Gossip, and War Politics” challenges readers to deeply conceptualize post-World War II sociological acceptance as it affects political practices (Friedman 1105). Friedman asserts that Senator Joe McCarthy was a target of sexual attack during a time that homophobia and anticommunism were one in the same. It was not so much McCarthy’s actual sexual orientation that was important, Friedman explains, but rather how the media and politics used homophobia as a tool; even against an iconic anti-communist and anti-homosexual individual (Friedman 1106). Tying sexualization of cold war politics and the lavender scare, “cold war liberals” subscribed to cultural logic as a means to their own ends; namely to subjugate McCarthy and his “Washington outsider, self-made, autonomous, representation of the common man”( Friedman 1106) persona. Friedman introduces the lavender scare as such…
“As two decades of careful scholarship as revealed the “red scare” was accompanied by a far-reaching “lavender scare,” in which thousands of suspected homosexuals were investigated, interrogated, and dismissed by …show more content…
This is relevant according to Friedman because it became omnipresent on television, in photographs, and political cartoons (Friedman 1120). The photo is of McCarthy and Cohn. Cohn is whispering to McCarthy. Whispering you might say? As Friedman explains, whispering happened between many during subcommittees and proceeding but it was this image caught in time, Friedman states that was iconic…
“On one level, whispering, like gossip, is a feminine tactic; the whispering offers information syly, secretly, deviously, because she has not the social authority to speak it aloud. She is not wholly without power, but remains dependent upon another to bring her private knowledge into public.” (Friedman
Andrea Friedman’s “The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: the lavender Scare, Gossip, and War Politics” challenges readers to deeply conceptualize post-World War II sociological acceptance as it affects political practices (Friedman 1105). Friedman asserts that Senator Joe McCarthy was a target of sexual attack during a time that homophobia and anticommunism were one in the same. It was not so much McCarthy’s actual sexual orientation that was important, Friedman explains, but rather how the media and politics used homophobia as a tool; even against an iconic anti-communist and anti-homosexual individual (Friedman 1106). Tying sexualization of cold war politics and the lavender scare, “cold war liberals” subscribed to cultural logic as a means to their own ends; namely to subjugate McCarthy and his “Washington outsider, self-made, autonomous, representation of the common man”( Friedman 1106) persona. Friedman introduces the lavender scare as such…
“As two decades of careful scholarship as revealed the “red scare” was accompanied by a far-reaching “lavender scare,” in which thousands of suspected homosexuals were investigated, interrogated, and dismissed by …show more content…
This is relevant according to Friedman because it became omnipresent on television, in photographs, and political cartoons (Friedman 1120). The photo is of McCarthy and Cohn. Cohn is whispering to McCarthy. Whispering you might say? As Friedman explains, whispering happened between many during subcommittees and proceeding but it was this image caught in time, Friedman states that was iconic…
“On one level, whispering, like gossip, is a feminine tactic; the whispering offers information syly, secretly, deviously, because she has not the social authority to speak it aloud. She is not wholly without power, but remains dependent upon another to bring her private knowledge into public.” (Friedman